Where And When To See Tonight’s Aurora Australis

For the best chance of catching the show, head somewhere dark and clear with a view to the south. City lights will dull the colours, so rural lookouts, beaches and coastal cliffs are your best bet. Parts of New South Wales (including Sydney), Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and South Australia are all poised to catch a glimpse of the spectacle.

While auroras can be visible to the naked eye, particularly the soft reds and pinks, the most vivid hues reveal themselves through a camera lens. A 10- to 15-second exposure is enough to capture the full sweep of colour.

Patience is also key, with displays often lasting between 15 minutes and several hours.

Auroras are most active in the hours surrounding midnight, typically between 10pm and 2am local time.

With stronger geomagnetic conditions forecast for tonight, that window could stretch earlier into the evening and closer to dawn. While sightings are possible outside these peak hours, displays tend to be fainter and less defined.

For real-time tracking, the Space Weather Prediction Centre offers rolling 30-minute forecasts showing the aurora’s location and intensity as conditions evolve.

The lights are caused by a geomagnetic storm, a celestial ripple created when charged particles are ejected from the Sun during an event known as a coronal mass ejection.

When those particles collide with gases in our atmosphere, they glow like neon.

In Australia, you should look towards the south when searching for the Aurora Australis. Auroras form around Earth’s magnetic poles, and because Australia sits in the southern hemisphere, the lights typically appear low on the southern horizon, especially from southern states like Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and the southern parts of Western Australia and NSW.